BCS computers start farewell from a history filled with death threats, controversy and pride

The Bowl Championship Series bids farewell after this season. Throughout the 2013 season, AL.com will run a periodical series about college football's transformative and controversial postseason format. Today: The BCS computers exit stage left.

Jeff Sagarin has an idea. Once the Bowl Championship Series computers exit when a selection committee ushers in the College Football Playoff next season, Sagarin says his ratings and the other five used by the BCS should form a "shadow government."

In Sagarin's mind, picture England. A party out of power operates opposite the ministers who run the country in case there's a specially-called election. That way the shadow government can hit the ground running.

Jeff Sagarin

Sagarin sounds like at first he's joking. Sort of.

If this sounds a little odd, well, there has been nothing normal about being a computer ranker during the controversial, 16-year BCS. Death threats, formula changes, transparency questions, no contracts (until there were contracts), career advancements, intellectual challenges, and fun times have accompanied the historic journey.

"Who knows?" Sagarin said. "We may decide to put our rankings together and have (fellow BCS computer analyst) Ken Massey add them up and divide them and post them."

Bill Hancock, executive director of the BCS and CFP, said there likely won't be one computer metric for the 12 to 18 playoff committee members to use in 2014, such as the Ratings Percentage Index in other sports. Committee members will have "megabytes of data" for every team and are free to look at whatever rankings they want, Hancock said.

"But I think at the end of the day, human decisions have to be a part of the College Football Playoff moving forward," Hancock said. "There's no way that any computer can tell you that the power forward had a headache when the team lost, or the left tackle had finals and midterms that week and wasn't focused as much as he should be."

So as college football ditches its reliance on computers (well, one-third reliance anyway), there's a feeling of what exactly? What are the farewell emotions for people charged with producing emotionless data?

"I have mixed feelings about it," said Richard Billingsley, whose rankings have been used for 15 of the BCS' 16 years. "I'm excited the future will bring a playoff and maybe allow me to branch out and do some other things. I'm disappointed that computers will not be involved."

In what other sport could two college roommates decide there must be a better way to rank football teams and then be included at the attempted solution?

"We've enjoyed every minute of it," said Chris Hester, whose rankings with Jeff Anderson started the BCS computers in 1998 with Sagarin and The New York Times. "The fact that it's ending, it's like, oh well. It's cool while it lasted to be involved in something so big and so relevant in college football. It's almost like a weekly reconnect with Jeff because we're on other sides of the country now."

Where else in sports could Wes Colley, the University of Alabama-Huntsville professor whose rankings joined the BCS in 2001, still like for someone to point out when the computers got the BCS wrong that makes ditching them necessary?

"Don't you actually have to make a mistake to be fired?" Colley asked. "I think we're just throwing the baby out with the bath water."

Listen to the computer guys. Unlike poll voters, who can often hide in groupthink, the computers have been on the frontline. What these computers say today reflect questions their human replacements will be asking next year at this time.

Computers vs. humans differences

To understand the BCS computers is to accept a reality: Computers don't rank teams in a vacuum. Sure, they input data and spit it back out with rankings largely based on wins and losses, who teams play and who teams' opponents play.

"But the argument for computers is that they're objective, which is kind of a fallacy," Hester said. "Computers are programmed by humans that set what they consider important. We're all different. We try to be as subjective as we can, but we have to set a criteria."

Sagarin swears that computers tell you who the best teams are.

"I truly, truly believe that," he said. "I don't think they want to select the best teams (in the playoff). I think they want to select the teams that will be a good matchup in the public's eye that the public has been led to believe. That doesn't always mean they're selecting the best teams."

In five of the past six years, the computer rankings differed from the final BCS standings, which are comprised of an equal split of the USA Today coaches poll, the Harris poll and the computers.

The computers would have matched LSU vs. Virginia Tech, not Ohio State, in 2007; Florida vs. Texas, not Oklahoma, in 2008; Alabama vs. Cincinnati, not Texas, in 2009; LSU vs. Oklahoma State, not Alabama, in 2011; and Notre Dame vs. Florida, not Alabama, in 2012. The only explanation Hester can offer about these differences is computers are largely based on results and schedules and can't be swayed by style.

"What I think computers do better than humans is they value each game and look at the totality of the season," Hester said. "It's very easy as a human to get wrapped up in one game. It's hard for a human to aggregate all of that information in the same way as a computer. I'm not saying one way is right or wrong, just different."

Margin of victory was removed from any BCS computer after Nebraska made the national championship game in the 2001 season despite not winning its conference.

Want to get Sagarin fired up? Talk margin of victory with him -- the element the BCS removed in 2002 after Nebraska, not Oregon, played for the national title.

At the time, Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese justified the switch by saying a computer "can't get the nuances of the score" and cited sportsmanship factors. He acknowledged margin of victory is a factor in the media and coaches' polls.

Through the years, noted statisticians have called for their colleagues to boycott the BCS in part because they say the calculations are irrational and prevent any meaningful contribution by statisticians.

"The computer guys have served as a huge, convenient lightning rod for criticism," Sagarin said. "We're considered stupid or incompetent and don't know football. The questions that needed to be asked of Tranghese were: Just what are the nuances of the 59-3 score, and where did you learn the word nuance?"

Some colleagues disagree. Colley said if the goal is to predict which team is most likely to win tomorrow, then use margin of victory. Otherwise, he said, strength of schedule and victories should be the top priority.

Added Hester: "Jeff (Anderson) and I never quite understood why college football was the only sport in the world where winning impressively was more important than simply winning. The way college football evolved was winning with big offensive numbers was considered more impressive than just beating teams by 10."

'I've been called a Nazi'

This just in: Computers accept abuse from fans, too.

"I remember I've been called a Nazi, I've been called a South-hating Yankee," said Hester, who lives in Seattle. "That was a Tennessee fan. Your bias is always against the team ranked lower than where their fans think they should be. I suspect it's probably a good thing if everybody is calling us biased."

Sagarin tells the story of an irate Penn State fan e-mailing him in the BCS' early days because Sagarin used margin of victory. The Penn State fan's theory: Joe Paterno is such a sportsman that he could win every game 50 points but holds the score down. Thus, the fan reasoned, Penn State's rating should be added by 30 to 40 points.

"I said, 'Shouldn't I do that for other teams?'" Sagarin said. "He said, 'Oh, no, Paterno is the only one like that.' These people are so sick and so focused on their team. The guys in the South, they don't write funny letters, I'll put it that way."

Sagarin said he once got a letter saying he should be shot but didn't take it seriously.

Computer rankings comprise one-third of the BCS formula that determines who plays for the national championship trophy. Two human polls make up the other two-thirds of the formula.

Similar phone calls were taken more seriously by Billingsley, who lives in Oklahoma and was accused by Texas fans in 2008 of rigging the BCS when his rankings had the Sooners ahead of the Longhorns. Despite Texas beating Oklahoma earlier in the season, the computers ranked the Sooners No. 2 to win a Big 12 tiebreaker.

A Texas student posted Billingsley's phone number on the Internet with a message that Billingsley should pay for what he has done.

"Within 30 minutes after my rankings are posted, I'm getting death threats over the phone," said Billingsley, who ironically has been a stress-management expert in his main job. "I live 12 miles north of the Red River. It would have been nothing for some crazy to come over and fire bomb some house. It was scary."

Billingsley said he called the Big 12 office, which had Texas Athletics Director DeLoss Dodds contact the Texas student to take down the message. The student then called Billingsley and apologized.

The grief that computers bear in the BCS underscores what committee members may feel with a four-team playoff. Poll members vote in large groups, meaning each individual vote carries less weight than one of six computers or one of 12 to 18 committee members.

"One way to insulate yourself is to have objective measures like computer rankings," Colley said. "If you don't have that, I just don't know what you lean on. You have to say we just thought this team was better."

Hester said he finds a committee "scary" because of the unknown about whether there are personal agendas.

"If the fourth team comes down to Louisville and Notre Dame and Notre Dame gets chosen, there's the accusation that it's based on Notre Dame's popularity," Hester said. "It's really a no-win situation whatever you do. We live in a world now where no matter what decision is made, it will be criticized by half the people."

What's next for computer guys?

Colley can't help but laugh at the memory. At one time, there was no formal contract between the computers and the BCS. Roy Kramer, who founded the BCS, knew he wanted computers to balance out human polls, but the execution initially had a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mentality.

"This whole time we've had this billion-dollar industry based on a wink and a handshake -- not even a handshake, an e-mail handshake like, 'Yeah, I'll do it, it's cool,'" Colley said. "It was odd when we did get a contract like, 'This seems a little tardy.'"

Sagarin, whose rankings are published on USA Today's web site, is the most accomplished of the BCS computer guys. He has been doing ratings in many sports since 1972 and said he felt he had to join the BCS because "if you weren't in it, you'd be considered not good enough. It was kind of an ego thing."

It appears that all of the BCS computer guys will continue to do their rankings next season when the playoff begins.

At one point, the BCS made many of the analysts not print their ratings until Monday rather than Sunday. Sagarin wouldn't do it.

"USA Today pays me to print on their web site on Sunday," he said. "If ever there was a choice between the BCS or USA Today, I would choose USA Today."

Hester and Anderson treat their rankings as a hobby. Hester used to do sports talk radio and now works at Microsoft. Anderson is a former Air Force Academy professor who does freelance political writing and consulting in Washington D.C.

Joining the BCS significantly helped the career of Billingsley. He started contributing to ESPN's college football encyclopedia. He proudly says his No. 1 and No. 2 teams were the same as the BCS final results in 13 of the past 15 years and believes he has a "valuable property" that a media outlet could use next year.

"I'll have a greater opportunity to do commentary and that's exciting," Billingsley said. "All of the computer guys are limited to some degree of what we can and cannot say, and I understand that. It wouldn't be right to project results before we know what the rankings will be."

Tell that to Sagarin. n the first year of the BCS, Sagarin was often quoted discussing the merits of individual teams and predicting who would be selected. That didn't please Kramer.

"I was arrogant and shot my mouth off a lot," Sagarin said. "I cringe at thinking at the things I said. I would get my foot in my mouth and seemed to enjoy the taste of it. Kramer would call me up like once a week cursing for the first 30 seconds, 'Shut your mouth!'"

Around 2002, Billingsley pushed for the BCS computer guys to get paid, which now occurs. Because they remain under contract, none of the rankers interviewed would reveal how much they are paid. (Two other computer guys, Peter Wolfe and Massey, could not be reached for this article.)

Colley said the pay is enough to maintain up-to-date computer equipment, keep the Internet turned on, and attend some football games each year. He figures he'll be cutting back on football games next year.

Said Sagarin: "The amount they initially offered was insultingly low. I talked to them and said, 'This is ludicrous. You want to offer less than what you can buy a television for,' and they got embarrassed and multiplied by it."

Every analyst appears intent on continuing their rankings. Because five of the six computer guys kept their codes private, their rankings may still have value after the BCS.

The only analyst who reveals his computer code to the public -- or even entirely to the BCS, for that matter -- is Colley, who cites academic integrity as his reason. Back in 2010, Colley mistakenly failed to include the score of a Football Championship Subdivision playoff game in his data set. That distorted the final BCS rankings with LSU and Boise State swapped at No. 10 and No. 11, and Alabama and Nebraska swapped at No. 17 and No. 18.

"It's obviously their decision and I respect that," he said. "I worry that in the desperation to maintain intellectual property, they're going to find themselves clinging to something that isn't as valuable. It's like, 'Congratulations, you own it. But it's not worth anything.'"

Said Hester: "It's funny: Nobody ever asks Apple or Microsoft to release their code. The reason is it's their property."

Inevitably, once the computers leave following this season, someone will piece together the old computer rankings that still get churned out. Human polls will be added and a declaration will be made: "This is what the BCS would have produced without a playoff."

And what becomes of the computer guys? They'll go on with their lives and curiously watch to see what criteria determines the playoff participants -- a shadow of the past that never quite disappears.